Jeff Koons Announces Retirement from Art

In a surprise statement released last night by his publicist,
mega-celebrity pop artist Jeff Koons announced the end of his
career in art and the termination of all projects and staff at
his Manhattan studio by the end of 2019.

“I am proud of everything that I have achieved, but the same
calling that brought my practice into being is now calling on
me to stop,” the statement reads. Another line from the
missive, which is said to have perplexed his staff and those
nearest to him, reads: “A life-altering religious epiphany has
revealed to me a necessary bend in the spiritual path that has
guided me since the beginning of my career. I intend to respond
to it with acceptance, ending my path in the commercial art
world.”

Koons, a master of pop art who translated kitsch and banality
into works worth millions of dollars, has been suffering from a
slowdown in business in the past two years, coupled with a
series of legal entanglements. The artist is currently
embroiled in a filed against him and Gagosian Gallery
over charges of undelivered works. In November last year, a
French court of copyright infringement of a 1985
advertisement in his 1988 sculpture “Fait d’hiver.” The artist
was ordered to pay the creator of the advertisement a sum of
$170,000. This case joins over similar charges dating
back to 2014.

Koons’s decision to close his studio comes after downsizing his
staff four times since 2015. The latest shakeup in January, in
which dozens of workers were laid off, coincided with plans to
move his studio to Hudson Yards. Last night’s statement
announced that this relocation has been canceled. The studio
will focus on finishing commissioned projects until it closes
permanently next December, the statement says.

Koons’s surprising move is drawing mixed reactions in the art
world. A collector and a close friend of the artist who spoke
with Hyperallergic on condition of anonymity said, “I think
Jeff struggled to balance his success with the deep loathing of
so many haters.” According to the collector, Koons has been
discreetly pursuing religious studies in the past few months.
“He’s been showing a lot of interest in divinity studies
lately, but we never saw this coming,” the source said about
Koons’s retirement, “To be honest, we’re a little worried about
Jeff.”

Koons, 64, was born to a Protestant family in York,
Pennsylvania. Hyperallergic has yet received a reply to its
inquiry as to which religious faith, if any in particular, was
responsible for artist’s epiphany.

On social media, the overall reaction to Koons’s announcement
was less than kind. “Good riddance”; “I’ve regained my faith in
humans”; and “LOL ur art sucked anyway” were among the
most-liked comments on the web.

In Paris, the group of prominent cultural figures who opposed
the placement of Koons’s sculpture “” near the Palais de Tokyo (later moved to a
garden beside the PetitPalais) issued a
“thank you” letter to the artist for his retirement. “We in
Paris would like to thank Jeff Koons for finally closing down
his production line of distasteful art. Now that he has
retired, we accept his gift to Paris as a relic of a bygone
era,” the statement reads.

Koons’s announcement is expected to send shockwaves through the
art market, although it remains to be seen how it will affect
the market value of his works. An upcoming Christie’s in May is to break the artist’s $48 million auction record
with an estimated $50-$70 million price tag for his sculpture
“”
(1986). Dealers, collectors and auction houses are nervously
accommodating to a new reality in which Koons, as he promises
in his statement, will be creating art only for himself and his
family.

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